This paper discusses the social constructions of gender and the problematic effects of these constructions‐masculine/feminie‐on intimate attachments. It summarizes the aspect of feminist scholarship which revised the traditional developmental paradigm to include a psychology of women and cites recent infant research which re‐describes development as a process of increasingly complex forms of relatedness rather than as a progression from attachment to separation. The authors are influenced by the school of feminist revisionism which argues on behalf of the integration of male and female attributes in each person. Two clinical techniques are suggested‐“gender questions” and the “gender mantra”‐which identify the contradictions inherent in the social construction of gender and encourage alternative constructions that more adequately represent men's and women's actual psychol